The Crisis Lamp Represents the Degeneration of Once-Valued Assets

Artists have been communicating like this for thousands of years through paintings, but this Crisis Lamp marks a fairly recent practice of using more practical objects to comment on society. Here we have a functional light fixture that provides useful illumination, flaunts an aesthetically pleasing appearance, but also symbolizes the deterioration of the global economy.

This is done through the form and the materiality of the piece, beginning at the top with a lampshade shaped like a gold bar. As it morphs into its crooked neck the four flat sides buckle into a crumpled fabric of folded triangles. The spine of Meikstudio's Crisis Lamp narrows to nearly a point at its base, spreading out to produce a puddle of the golden metal. The lightbulb seems to have melted down the valuable brick as a figurative remark on international finance.